The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is transitioning some aspects of flight planning and routine communication with air traffic control (ATC) to rely less on voice communication and more on data communication. One application included in this next generation datalink communication system is that the FAA plans to begin delivering Departure Clearances (DCL) via datalink at major airports. The FAA's initial plans are to deploy DCL at fifty-seven major airports in the United States over the next several years. While the FAA plans to transition some aspects of flight planning and routine communication via datalink at all major United States airports eventually, the transition will take a number of years to complete since only a few major airports will be upgraded each year. Similar transitions are likely to occur, and have been occurring, for other aviation administrations, as well. Due to these changes, an ATC can spend more time controlling traffic rather than giving voice instructions to a pilot for DCL. Moreover, transcription errors can be reduced due to this implementation.
For the reasons stated above and for reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the specification, there is a need in the art for improved systems and methods for detecting if a datalink application is available at an airport.